How to Make an Art Grid on Mac for Painting
In one of my previous articles I described how I add a grid to my reference photos before starting a drawing. Here's what I had at the finish of that commodity:
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Today I'chiliad going to pick upward where I left off and draw my actual drawing process. Although I'thousand using a canis familiaris portrait every bit a demonstration slice, this method works with whatever subject.
1. Add a grid to your drawing paper
It'southward a painstaking job to draw an accurate grid by hand, which is why I prefer to impress this filigree on my paper whenever possible. Withal, in this case the size of this portrait (16×twenty) makes it also large to print—so I did accept to hand-draw it.
Luckily, this grid is square, which made calculating it'south size and placement fairly easy. I just needed to make up one's mind how big the grid should be on my newspaper earlier using a ruler or straight-edge to put the filigree in place.
NOTE: A proficient dominion of pollex when drawing portraits is that the bailiwick should accept up at least one-half of the width of the paper. Since the width of my paper is xvi inches, 8 inches is as small as the filigree should be.
Since the grid on my reference photo contains a little fleck of the domestic dog's shoulder, I made my cartoon grid 9-i/2 inches broad (and tall). This means her confront should measure slightly over 8 inches.
ii. Rough in your drawing
I began my drawing by putting in bones shapes (nose, mouth, eyes, and ears) as accurately and apace equally possible. I didn't want to get bogged downwardly in detail likewise apace, but information technology still took almost 30 minutes to do the basic crude draft with a medium hardness pencil. Then I sketched in the rest of the head and features with light, gestural strokes.
The lines of the filigree (horizontal, vertical, and diagonal) helped me see exactly where each characteristic should announced on my drawing paper. Drawing what I saw in my reference photo became more than near creating abstract shapes and intersecting lines rather than drawing an "centre" or an "ear."
3. Refine your drawing
Once the cartoon was roughed in to my satisfaction, I worked through a series of revisions. A simple drawing may take simply one or two revisions. A more complex one may go through a half dozen or more revisions.
For revisions, I taped tracing paper over the gridded drawing and worked through the offset revision on the tracing paper. This preserves the original drawing (in example I make a major mistake) and allows me to work with the filigree a piffling bit longer.
The illustration above shows my cartoon half-finished on tracing newspaper—I'g working from the height-left over. Below is the finished cartoon on tracing paper, still mounted over the top of the original drawing.
4. Plough your paper over to correct mistakes
Because I'yard correct-handed, I tend to draw with a right-handed bias. Flipping over a drawing helps me spot mistakes, and gives me a fresh view of my composition. It as well allows me to right any mistakes. This is the master reason I apply tracing paper.
Hither is the drawing viewed from the front (I've removed it from the grid drawing to make it easier to run across).
Below is the same drawing, only I've flipped information technology to view it from the dorsum.
And here is the original reference photograph also shown in reverse for comparison.
Overall, the cartoon is adequately accurate, just I'k able to run into some inaccuracies in the shape and placement of the optics and the nose.
Whenever I make corrections on the back of a drawing, I use a colored pencil and then I tin can tell 1 set of lines from another. In this case, I used a ruby pencil to redraw the optics and the nose on the back of my tracing paper. I outlined the eye on the right, and then redrew the opposite eye. The nose was also redrawn, along with the upper lip to put the olfactory organ into context.
The side by side illustration shows the drawing from the front end. I've erased the eye, olfactory organ, and upper lip which were incorrectly placed, and re-drawn them with graphite on the front end. The ruby lines are still visible, but that's OK—I'll exit them every bit reference points for farther revisions.
For this particular portrait, I did a few more revisions, so turned the tracing paper over and displayed information technology in a identify where I would frequently see it over the next few days—I do this because it sometimes takes a while to spot inaccuracies in a drawing.
This procedure of reviewing the cartoon and making changes continues until I'm satisfied that it's equally accurate every bit I can go far. At that indicate it's but a thing of transferring the drawing to the final paper, and filling in all the details and colors.
5. Salve your works-in-progress!
Eventually I cease upwardly with at least four copies of the drawing in progress. I have the original cartoon that I created on my cartoon grid, the first tracing paper cartoon, the reversed tracing paper drawing, and a last revised cartoon on tracing paper.
This may seem like as well much work (and a lot of drawings to shop!) but if you're doing a lot of portrait piece of work, it tin actually exist a good thing.
It'south not unheard of for a portrait to get damaged or destroyed, either in your care or after it has been purchased, and suddenly you demand to create a replacement. Having all these drawings in storage is a great safeguard in such a situation—you tin can pick up correct from the final step, without having to redo the entire process over once again.
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Source: https://emptyeasel.com/2014/10/14/how-to-create-an-accurate-drawing-using-the-grid-method/
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